INTRANET

Kylan Jones-Huffman Lecture Series, 2005-2006

Fall 2005

2 December 2005Robert Rook
"War, Memory and Globalization: Commemorating the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Syria"

Dr. Robert Rook, professor and chair of the Department of History at Towson, joined Towson University in 1995. He received his B.A. in History in 1980 from Furman University, M.A. in History in 1983 from Bowling Green State University and Ph.D. in History in 1996 from Kansas State University. His current research includes Representations of War in the Arab World and Water resource development in support of U.S. foreign policy during the cold War. His research interests are 20th century U.S., Environmental History, Military History and History Education. Some of his publications are "Dr. Strangelove Meets Dr. Spock: American Children, the Cold War" in Children and War (January 2005) and "Race, Water and Foreign Policy: The Tennessee Valley Authority's Global Agenda Meets 'Jim Crow,'" Diplomatic History (January 2004).

Spring 2006

January 2006Nathaniel Fick
"One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer"

After receiving a B.A. in classics from Dartmouth in 1999, Nathaniel Fick served as an infantry officer and then as an elite Recon Marine. He saw action in Afghanistan and Iraq before leaving the Corps as a Captain. His platoon were the subject of a series of articles in Rolling Stone which were the basis for the book Generation Kill by Evan Wright. Capt Fick is the author of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer. He is now in a dual-degree program at the Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government.

9 February 2006Rashid Khalidi
"Historical Perspectives on Democracy in the Middle East"

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, received his BA from Yale in 1970, and his D.Phil. from Oxford in 1974. He is editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was President of the Middle East Studies Association, and an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 until June 1993. He is author of Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009); The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006); Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004); Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1996); Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War (1986); and British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (1980), and was the co-editor of Palestine and the Gulf (1982) and The Origins of Arab Nationalism (1991).

28 February 2006Ahmed Soaiaia
"Dignity, Life and Duty in Islamic Law and Ethics"

Prof. Souaiaia eceived his PhD at the University of Washington, his MA and BA from Annaba University in Algeria before coming to the US. He is now a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa after having taught previously at the University of Washington. In addition to being a skilled and acclaimed teacher, Prof. Souaiaia has published a number of research articles in respected professional journals such as the Journal of Law and Religion, Studies in Islam and the Middle East, and Rethinking Polygamy in Islamic Traditions. Prof. Souaiaia is the author and translator of four books: Human Rights and Islam: The Divine and Mundane in Human Rights Law; Profiling Islamic Civilization: A History of the Legislative, Judiciary, and Executive Branches; Orality and the Formation of Islamic Law; and After Orality: From Inspired to Reasoned Precedent.

February 2006Carol Delaney
"The Story of Abraham: Foundation for Unity or Strife in Judaism, Christianity and Islam?"

Prof. Delaney is a Professor of Anthropology at Brown University and emeritus at Stanford University. She has published widely on the Middle East and Islam, including Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology (2004), Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth (1998), Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis (1995) and The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society (1991).

28 March 2006Michael Cook
"Commanding Good and Forbidding Wrong in Islam"

Prof. Michael Cook is the Cleveland Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is the author of a number of ground-breaking books including Muslim Dogma (1981) and Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (2000). Prof. Cook received his degrees at Cambridge University and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He is a recent recipient of the prestigious Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award.

April 2006Abdulaziz Sachedina
"Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism"

Abdulaziz Sachedina received BA degrees from Aligarh Muslim University (in Islamic Studies) in Aligarh, India, and Ferdowsi University (in Persian language and literature) in Mashhad, Iran. In addition, he studied Islamic jurisprudence at the Madrasa of Ayatollah Milani in Mashhad. He received the MA and PhD degrees in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "The Doctine of Mahdiism in Imami Shi'ism: A Study of Doctrinal Evolution in the 9th and 10th Centuries". He has taught at the University of Virginia since 1976, he has held a variety of visiting professorships at Wilfrid Laurier, Waterloo and McGill universities (all in Canada), Haverford College (Pennsylvania), the University of Jordan (Amman), and Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran). Professor Sachedina has lectured widely in the Middle East, East Africa, India, Pakistan and Europe. He is a core member of the Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism Project in the CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) Preventive Diplomacy Program and a key contributor to the program's efforts to link religion to universal human needs and values in the service of peace-building. He serves on the board of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. His books include: Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism,The Prolegomena to the Qur'an, The Just Ruler in Twelver Shiism: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence, Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures: Western and Islamic Perspectives on Religious Liberty (co-authored with David Little and J. E. Kelsay), and Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shiism.

25 April 2006Ahmed Mustafa
"The Dot of Certainty in Islamic Art"

Prof. Mustafa is an artist and scholar of Islamic art. He has lived and worked in London since 1974 and directs the Fe-Noon Ahmed Moustafa Research Centre for Arab Art and Design, which he established in 1983. He has taught and lectured in many parts of the world, and is currently a visiting professor at the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture, London; the University of Westminster, London; and the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Alexandria, Egypt.